Introduced in Oracle Solaris 10, the dladm is used to configure datalinks.
The dladm command is used to manage the following types of network configuration:
Physical interfaces – Ethernet, wireless, and InfiniBand
Virtual networking features – Etherstubs, VNICs, and IP tunnels
Switch features – Link aggregations, VLANs, and bridging technologies
Device characteristics – Speed, duplexing, priority, and feature negotiation
The dladm command creates persistent network configuration for the profile that is currently active on the system. Thus, net0 can have different MTU values in different profiles. For example, if a datalink named net0 is configured with a specific maximum transmission unit (MTU) of 1200, that MTU value is persistent for net0 just for that profile. If you then activate another profile and set a different MTU value for that profile by using the dladm command, the new MTU value would be applied just to that profile. See Chapter 2, Administering Datalink Configuration in Oracle Solaris.
The dladm command also replaces the ndd command that is used to configure protocol properties in Oracle Solaris 10. As a tool for setting Layer 2 driver properties, the dladm command provides several advantages over the ndd command. See Comparing the ndd Command to the ipadm Command in Transitioning From Oracle Solaris 10 to Oracle Solaris 11.2 .